


you can play your games if you let me hold your hand

by sevensevan



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, F/F, Graduation, it's happy I promise, like it actually is this time i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 07:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14075571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensevan/pseuds/sevensevan
Summary: Daisy's locker is across the hall from Jemma's during their senior year, and it's maybe the best thing that has ever happened to either of them.





	you can play your games if you let me hold your hand

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a lil oneshot for my short oneshot/drabble collection and it became two thousand words long so here we are. enjoy.

Your locker is across the hall from Jemma Simmons’ senior year. It’s a coincidence, a random event. It should’ve been harmless, it should’ve been forgotten within days.

And yet, if you could go back and change it, give your locker to someone else, to _anyone_ else, you would. Because she smiles at you from across the hall, and offers to tutor you when she sees you carrying a chemistry test with a _D-_ written in red pen on the top, and suddenly you’re at her house every Saturday afternoon, supposedly learning chemistry, but that quickly devolves into sitting on her floor and throwing bits of paper at her while you talk about everything from chemistry to religion to philosophy to what kind of pizza you’re going to order, since her parents are almost never home to make dinner. She’s beautiful, and funny, and kind, and probably the smartest person you’ve ever met. You’re sort of in love with her by November and it’s a horrible, terrible, awful idea, because she has a boyfriend and you’ve seen them kissing at her locker and holding hands in the halls, and she’s way too good for you, but by the time you think to stop it, you’re already way too far gone.

Jemma has a boyfriend and you’ve never told anyone that you’re gay; you’ve definitely never told _her_ , but one Saturday morning she’s talking in a fast, high-pitched, excited voice about some nerdy TV show, and she’s beautiful and vibrant and you lean in and kiss her anyway, despite all the reasons you shouldn’t.

And despite all the reasons _she_ shouldn’t, she kisses you back. For a precious few seconds, it’s perfect, and then she pulls away and everything falls apart.

She hasn’t told her parents, she says, and she doesn’t want to break up with Fitz because he’s her best friend and she loves him, she does, but she pulls you back in and kisses you again anyway. You let her, because it’s Jemma and she’s so much smarter than you, and if she thinks it’s okay then it must be, right?

(You know it’s not okay. You _know_ it’s not okay because Jemma still kisses Fitz at her locker the following Monday, and you’re not allowed to tell anybody about her or what happened between you, and it leaves a pit of darkness and pain in your stomach and _it is not okay_. But when you go over to Jemma’s that night, she kisses you against her bedroom door, and it’s not okay but it’s _good_ and maybe that’s enough.)

To her credit, Jemma never tries to make what’s happening between you into anything less than it is. She doesn’t say it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t pretend not to feel the same way as you do. But three weeks into…whatever it is that you’re doing with her, you see her holding Fitz’s hand and laughing at something he had said, and you remember how she looked in her car that weekend, when you drove out to the lake a few hours from town, windows down in the car even though it’s mid-December, laughing with her whole body, so fucking _beautiful_ you could barely keep your eyes on the road and not her, and you compare it to how she looks now, smile strained, polite, laughing quietly.

Jemma might be good at acting, but she’s not pretending with _you_.

It’s not enough, not really. You only have a piece of her. She kisses you in her bedroom and lets you drag her out of class to the parking lot to make out in your car, but you can’t hold her hand in the hallways, you can’t call her your girlfriend, you can’t kiss her before class or randomly tell her that she looks beautiful in the middle of a conversation. So it’s _not_ enough, and it hurts, but you don’t think anything will ever be enough with Jemma. So you don’t say anything.

You slip up once. You kiss Jemma’s cheek when she stops at your locker to look over your homework before chemistry, and her eyes go wide, panicked, darting across the hall to where Fitz is waiting at her locker, looking bored. He doesn’t seem to care, or even really notice your action, but she still looks terrified. You apologize, later, and she tells you it doesn’t matter, says you didn’t do anything wrong, tries her best to make you feel better, but you remember the look in her eyes when it happened and you realize that, whatever she wants to call what’s happening between you, you love her and she loves you and she is absolutely not ready for it at _all_.

You break her heart on a Sunday in March. You drive to her house and you make it halfway through the speech you had come up with on the drive over, the one about how she’s a beautiful person and you love her (you’ve never told her that before, but here you are; giving her your everything and taking it away in the same breath) but you can’t play this game with her anymore, can’t be hers on the weekends and watch her with someone else at school, before she starts crying. And then you can’t talk at all, because you’re crying too, but somehow, you make it out the door and down the block to where you parked.

You sit in the car with the radio blasting so you don’t have to listen to the sounds of your own sobs.

Jemma doesn’t smile at you after that.

You pass chemistry. Maybe it’s because of Jemma, maybe it’s because you really, _really_ want to graduate and somehow find it in yourself to actually study, but you tell yourself it doesn’t matter how it happened. You walk across the stage at graduation in June, three months after you and Jemma went from a _sometimes_ to an _almost_ , and your foster parents take photos and congratulate you. You feel sort of empty still, but it’s okay, because in September, you’re leaving for UCLA, and Jemma Simmons’ ghost will stay in this town, where it belongs.

Jemma, unsurprisingly, is the valedictorian, beating out her boyfriend for the spot. She gives a beautiful speech about change, and it’s not cheesy, Jemma isn’t like that, but it’s emotional and eloquent and full of words that you only kind of know. You tell yourself that you can’t quite look at her because of the bright lights of the auditorium, even though you know it’s because you still feel like you can’t breathe when you see her face.

Jemma doesn’t look at you, not once.

You go to Lincoln Campbell’s graduation party and wander around the yard with a bottle of cheap beer and a numb feeling, like your veins are filled with novocaine instead of blood. You stay out there long after everyone else has gone inside, sitting on the swing that hangs from a tree in Lincoln’s yard and watching the stars fill up the night sky.

You’ve heard you can’t see the stars in LA. You don’t know yet, how you feel about that.

You’re so lost in thought and nostalgia that you don’t hear the footsteps behind you until Jemma comes into your field of view.

She says a few awkward words of congratulations, and you mumble something incoherent in response that might’ve, in a past life, been a compliment on her speech. It’s awkward and terrible, and not at all what you’re used to with Jemma.

And then she surges forward and kisses you, and it’s absolutely the last thing you should be doing, but you drop your mostly empty beer bottle and pull her closer desperately, because it’s been months and this is a thing that has only ever happened in her room or your room or hours away from the town. Now you’re outside, and she’s kissing you, and maybe she’s drunk, and you’re _definitely_ drunk, but you’re in love with her and that’s enough of a reason to let it happen.

Jemma presses closer, slipping her tongue into your mouth, and one or maybe both of you moan at the feeling. You feel the swing begin to slip out from under you and suddenly, with an impact that knocks the wind out of you, you’re on the ground, on your back. Jemma is lying on your chest, her legs tangled in the swing. She stares at you for a moment with wide, terrified eyes. For a second, it’s intense.

And then you’re both laughing.

Jemma rolls off of you, kicking at the swing until her legs fall free. She lies beside you in the dirt, and you’re laughing so hard you can’t breathe. It’s ridiculous. _You’re_ ridiculous, you and her, the whole thing. Five minutes ago you were stargazing and feeling sorry for yourself, and how stupid was _that_? High school was ridiculous, and college will be too, and maybe you’re just drunk and in love but life feels like one giant, beautiful joke that only you and Jemma understand.

“I told Fitz,” Jemma says, when you’ve both calmed down and are staring up at the stars quietly. You turn your head, looking over at her. She isn’t looking at you, and you commit this moment to memory: the shape of her profile in the combined light of the inside of the house and the stars, the faint strains of music filtering through the windows, the softness of her voice, the feeling in your chest. “Not—not about us, but…I told him I’m gay.” You don’t say anything. You wait, and it’s a long time before Jemma speaks again, long enough for the song inside to change. The beat sounds the same, though, a hundred and twenty-eight beats per minute. You can feel it in the ground beneath your head. “He wasn’t mad,” Jemma says eventually. “He…he was upset, but he wasn’t mad at me. I think we might make it through this. I think we’ll still be friends.” You manage a smile at that.

“I’m glad,” you murmur, and Jemma turns to look at you. Her eyes flick back and forth between yours, like she’s searching for something. “What?” you ask.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, reverently, like you’re something sacred. “For what I did to you. I know that it was wrong.” She bites her lip. “I won’t beg you for a second chance, but this, right here, this is me asking for another try.”

You shouldn’t take her back. You shouldn’t. You _shouldn’t_. But it’s all so _stupid_ , high school and the cheating and the internal drama and the self-pity and Jemma’s self-hatred and honestly, why _shouldn’t_ you take her back?

You wanted to hate Jemma and you couldn’t, and you didn’t want to love her but you do anyway. You lift yourself up on your elbow and kiss her under the stars in a boy you’ve known since kindergarten’s backyard as the ground shakes to a bad rap song, and it’s a terrible idea that you’re so, _so_ sure will work out.

So maybe you wouldn’t go back and change your locker assignment from last August. Because you’re here _now_ , and that makes it all worth it.

You don’t know what will happen in the future. You don’t know what will happen in September, when you leave and Jemma leaves and everything changes. But right now, Jemma’s pulling you closer, and you both taste like cheap beer and chapstick, and maybe things will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you liked it! i'm on tumblr @daisys-quake, and my fic requests are always open. leave a comment here or send me an ask :) check out my other skimmons fics as well! leave a comment and kudos if you enjoyed.


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